Fifty-First State (27 page)

‘The PM apologizes. He has been conferring with the President and the US military. I have word now that he is on his way.'

There was a stir round the table at this confirmation of the majority's suspicions. A few eyes shifted towards Field Marshall Burns, to see how he was reacting. But Burns was gazing straight ahead of him, as if his face had turned to stone. Lake, too, was imperturbable. ‘Thank you, Mr Gordon-Garnett,' he said, and sat down. He turned to John Stafford. ‘That's it – we're out of the picture.'

‘Looks like it,' Stafford said. He leaned towards Burns and said into his ear, ‘Let me go down to Hamscott.' Burns had expected the request, sooner or later, and now it was plain the tactics were being directed from Washington, he nodded. ‘Don't do anything stupid,' he advised. He thought, as Stafford got to his feet, that he himself had probably just done something stupid. Authorizing a general under his command to go down to Hamscott as an amateur hostage negotiator was unwise, to put it mildly. Exactly how unwise it would be deemed, at a possible inquiry, would depend on results. If Stafford succeeded there would be cheers all round. If he failed, and Burns was not optimistic about his chances of success, they would both end up standing on the parade ground having their buttons torn off and their swords snapped across the RSM's knee.

As Stafford left the room he exchanged a glance with Sir Hugo Lake, who looked at him impassively. He just had time to get out of the room before the Prime Minister entered the room.

16 Hamscott Crescent, Hamscott Common, Kent. January 25th, 2016. 10 p.m.

The Aliens and Kevin Staithe sat in the unnatural silence of an evening when no cars but emergency vehicles passed the house and no one in the neighbourhood was venturing out. There had been more phone calls that evening – from friends, neighbours and relatives – than there would normally have been for a week. Constantly repeating to callers from outside the area that they could not leave Hamscott Common, that they were, effectively trapped, had been sobering.

Kevin had arrived earlier on foot, the roads blocked. Rosie's Uncle Don had called and revealed that his escape to Dorset had been foiled on the ring road outside Hamscott Common. The Army had blocked off the road and were allowing no vehicles through.

‘We're sitting ducks,' Kevin had said.

Rob Allen said, ‘No call to be defeatist,' and his wife said nothing.

All they could do was sit and watch TV pictures of the area less than a mile from where they sat – the cordon of troops, the inner ring of men and women in protective clothing, the emergency vehicles, the massed police and the darkened outline of the base. They'd heard the newscasts against the sound of the helicopters circling their house and their passivity had made them more afraid. Rob turned off the TV saying, ‘They should have put the SAS in first thing.'

Kevin said, ‘All right if we go up in Rosie's room to listen to music, Mrs Allen?'

Rosie's father might once have demurred. He was old-fashioned. He knew what ‘listening to music' in a young woman's bedroom was likely to mean and he did not want to condone it under his own roof. But this time he just said, ‘All right, Kevin.' But Rosie and Kevin never reached the bedroom because Rob switched the TV on again immediately and a reporter, swathed in a coat and scarf, was saying, ‘We understand that General John Stafford has entered the base.'

‘First good news I've heard since this began,' said Rob Allen.

Hamscott Common, Kent. January 25th, 2016. 10 p.m.

On the way down to Hamscott Common at an average ninety miles an hour John Stafford had checked the reports on his screen. The earliest had been conveyed by the base communications centre before it was taken over by the invaders. At 7 p.m. on January 25th 2016 a force of between twenty and twenty-five men had entered Hamscott base from two sides, from the rear – the north-east side – and from the east. The small force had, it was assumed, disabled the electric fencing and the patrolling guards. As the communication was made, shots were heard. By 7.15 p.m. the invaders were apparently in charge of the base. Then all communication ended. Later reports from outside the base recorded that all lights had been turned off. A wounded servicemen who had been thrown outside the base at 7.20 p.m., when the first emergency vehicles arrived, had said that approximately fifty service personnel, seven civilian staff, fifteen women, wives of the serving men, and seven children were being held captive. The second man thrown out, a US Army sergeant, was dead. The message in his pocket stating that the base at Hamscott had been taken over by the Jihad group as a protest against the base being handed over to the US, the indiscriminate and unjustified bombing of Syria and the threats to overthrow the legally elected government of Iraq. It was signed by three men: Robert Carter, Raymond Reid and Ibrahim Al Maktoum. Carter and Reid were former soldiers from the Queen's Light Infantry, now operatives for Draycott Security, and Ibrahim Al Maktoum was a British doctor.

Just before they got to the Hamscott ring road checkpoint Stafford's phone rang. Burns told him, in a low voice, ‘Do you know where Petherbridge was while we were all sitting waiting for him? Grosvenor Square. Talking to the Yanks before he talked with us.'

‘Democracy in action,' Stafford said. ‘Any decisions yet?'

‘They've already been made without us. This meeting is just window dressing. I'm in the gents. I'd better get back inside. For God's sake be careful, John.'

As they started up after going through the checkpoint Stafford's driver turned round in his seat. ‘Think you can talk them out of it, General?'

‘What makes you think I'm here for that? Better keep your ideas to yourself, Corporal,' Stafford said. If I can't talk them out, no one can, he thought.

Now he stood under bright lights, surrounded by emergency vehicles, uniformed soldiers and RAF officers, ghostly men and women in white protective suits and helmets, Army and RAF officers in uniform, policemen and men and women in civilian clothing. There were some two hundred people inside the inner ring of Army soldiers and the outer ring of police. Stafford thought it looked like a village, gathered to celebrate some strange religious ceremony.

All attention was on the perimeter of the base, where two protective wire fences, fifty metres apart, defended the base. Beyond the wire was darkness. The parade ground and administration block were empty and silent. The dark outlines of fighter-bombers were visible on the runways. Use of radios and mobile phones was being kept to a minimum. Stafford knew there must be a thousand men and women and 150 vehicles behind him on the site, while inside the base there were approximately two hundred captive men, women and children. And yet it was very quiet. Suddenly he heard a nightingale begin to sing.

He said to Geoff Cunningham, his RAF opposite number, ‘I know Reid and Carter.'

Cunningham said, ‘They're not talking so far.' The Deputy Chief Constable of Kent could be heard, much amplified, calling ‘Reid – Carter—Al Maktoum – please talk to us. Pick up the phone. You are surrounded. Pick up the phone and talk to us.'

‘See what I mean,' said Cunningham. ‘The advice is, they'll break down and start talking.' His face was pinched under a heavily braided cap. He had been on the site, in temperatures only just above freezing, for three hours now.

‘Reid and Carter are tough. The men they're with may be tougher. They've got everything they need,' Stafford said.

‘We're thinking of cutting off the water,' said George Medlicott, coming up. Medlicott was the Superintendent of Kent Police. The three men, by the nature of their training, were opposed in their views. Medlicott, a policeman, saw the situation on the base as a siege involving hostages. His training and ethic was to negotiate. As a soldier, John Stafford saw the base as territory taken over by hostile forces and needing to be regained. While the RAF man, Cunningham, who had been furious when the bill to hand over the bases into exclusively US control was proposed, stood between the two, leaning more towards Stafford's military thinking, but fearful of the consequences of an attack. He said, ‘Even a leak from a two-kiloton rocket bomb stored there could kill thousands. These people are fanatics. They don't care who dies, including themselves.'

‘I can't speak for the others, but Carter and Reid aren't fanatics and they're far from suicidal,' Stafford said. ‘No clue about what they want?'

Medlicott answered. ‘Nothing beyond the note saying they're protesting.
Reid and Carter – the men who served with you – would you think them likely to take up a cause?'

‘The only cause they know is their own. Before that it was them and the regiment. They're in it for the money,' Stafford said. ‘What are your orders?'

‘Wait for the results of the discussions in London. Then there'll be a decision.'

Stafford turned his back to the centre of the ring of light, where, among the vehicles, there was a black car containing men he thought were American observers. He muttered to Medlicott, ‘I expect those buggers can hear us. Turn away so they can't see your lips moving – they've probably got lip-reading equipment.' Medlicott nodded. Stafford said, ‘I'm the only person Carter and Reid will talk to. I want to try to go in.'

Medlicott shook his head and muttered, ‘Fuck it, no. I can't authorize that.'

‘It's the only way we're going to find out what they want. And you know we're waiting for orders from Washington. How long have we got till the Marines come in, ready or not – ten minutes, half an hour? We'll get orders to secure the perimeter, but because the timing'll be kept secret we'll be caught on the hop. We'll be falling over each other outside while the Marines inside the base shoot up the town. Casualties on both sides and a good chance some of the bad guys will escape in the confusion. And that's the best scenario. Because if they've got the skills to arm a plane with a nuclear warhead, then we're really fucked.'

‘You haven't got orders,' Cunningham objected.

‘Keep your voice down,' warned Stafford, glancing towards the men standing around the black car. ‘And turn your back because the Yanks are waiting for someone to go in and, when they do, they'll have orders to shoot.'

Cunningham said, ‘I'm the officer in charge of the base and I can't sanction you entering.'

‘There's no official chain of command,' Stafford pointed out. ‘I believe I have my superior officers' support, which they can't openly give me. Cunningham, we know the Yanks are in charge. But they're not here – yet. And we are. This is our last chance to settle this ourselves. If not, we all know what's going to happen next.'

Cunningham did not like Stafford very much but knew he was right. A base the Americans saw as their own had been taken over by a handful of terrorists. One American soldier had been killed, one wounded and a number captured, along with American women and children. A humiliation, made worse by the fact that it was going round the world on TV, to the sound of cheers in the cafés of the Lebanon, celebratory rifle fire
in Iraq and in the federally administered tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan and, probably, the laughter of Palestinian children. The US would have to react, go in and win.

Stafford said to Medlicott and Cunningham, ‘You can't sanction my entering the base, but you can't order me not to, because this is a mess and no one's in overall command. No bad thing, really.' To cover them in case of a future inquiry he said rapidly, ‘You have both advised me not to enter the base in order to make contact with Carter and Reid. I am ignoring that advice.' He added, ‘I haven't got long. A little bird will have told the Yanks I'm here by now. For Christ's sake don't let anybody open fire.'

Neither man made any move to stop him as he walked over to one of the police cars and took the mike from the hand of the officer who held it. ‘Switch on,' he said. A PC will not easily question the orders of a General he has just seen talking to the Chief Constable. Stafford took the mike and walked towards the gates of the base saying, his voice amplified all over the area, ‘Carter – Reid. This is John Stafford. I know you can see me. I want to come in and talk to you. I'm unarmed. This isn't a trick. We need to talk.'

He was now standing alone with the great gates in front of him. Three men took off from the group of men and vehicles and began to run, fast, towards him. There was a dead silence in the brightly lit space behind Stafford and what seemed to him to be an even deeper silence inside the darkened area of the base. Walking towards the wire perimeter, now fifty metres from him, he called again, his voice echoing over the base and into the close-packed trees beyond, ‘Carter – Reid—it's John Stafford. Let me in. I want to talk to you.'

The three men from the black car had pulled up sharp some three metres from him. ‘General Stafford!' one called, ‘you have no authority—'

Stafford drowned them out with his loudspeaker. ‘Reid – Carter. Open the gates. I'm alone.' There was no point in telling Reid and Carter that they were surrounded, with no chance of escape. They were mercenaries, not martyrs, and wouldn't have gone in without a plan, however risky, to get out safely. Ahead of him, in the vast aircraft hangar 500 metres to his right, he thought he could see a dim light from under a hangar door. Behind him the American shouted, ‘General Stafford. Be warned. Get back or we are going to arrest you.'

This angered Stafford, who shouted, ‘Bob – Splash—the Marines are coming. Let me in. I want to talk.' He ran to the high wire gates and shook them, then saw inside, flat on the ground, a completely black figure crawling towards him from the direction of the hangar. Could the three men behind him see the crawling figure? Stafford wondered.

‘General John Stafford. You are under arrest,' called the American.
‘Turn around.' The figure reached the gate, raised itself and opened it just as the voice behind Stafford called, ‘General Stafford. Turn around or I will open fire.' Stafford pushed the gate – it opened and he ran, zigzagging into the darkness toward the aircraft hangar. Behind him he heard the clang of the closing gates. He heard shots. One hit the concrete in front of him. Seconds later, the black-clad figure was overtaking him, running ahead. When he reached the hangar door it was already pulled back.